Taavet Hinrikus

Large incumbents become big and sometimes become lazy and set themselves up for failure in the future.

You start a business being hungry, foolish, and a little bit naive. But more often than not, you end up being disrupted yourself. It happened to Skype.

People bought bitcoin because they thought it would be worth more tomorrow. And a lot of people got lucky. But we're not seeing real people use bitcoin. And we don't know what problem it solves. Now, blockchain, I think, is a genius advancement in technology.

Bitcoin, I think we can say, is dead.

We built TransferWise focused on customer innovation. That means we build our product based first and foremost on our customers.

When we talk about technology changing the world, we often hear about how it makes our lives easier, more connected, safer, or even healthier. They're all things we can easily identify with. The Internet makes our lives easier; services like Skype and WhatsApp allows us to be more connected - the examples are endless.

There's the risk of a serious case of FOMO at a place like Davos.

There's always been a lot of interest in the tech community about how to foster innovation and creativity - both within a company but also in the ecosystem of a tech cluster. In both cases, creating opportunities for people who don't encounter each other normally to meet and talk is key.

There's most definitely a Davos bubble. You're in a small Alpine town that, for just four days in January, sees its population tripled with world leaders, CEOs, media, police, the army... and a whole bunch of people who aren't invited but just come to hang out.

Celebrity-spotting is pretty standard at Davos. It's one of the things that makes it easy to criticise.

With a smartphone, we have a supercomputer in our pocket and are always connected. The way we bank is changing as part of this macro trend.

The growth of FinTech has been driven by adoption across age groups, but the demand from the millennial generation to innovate and think about financial services differently has been a catalyst for change.

The financial crisis of 2008 created a seismic shift in the dynamics of trust in financial services. FinTech would have happened without the global financial crisis - but it would have taken much longer.

Financial services have always been about trust. Perhaps the biggest barrier to entry has been getting new customers to trust an unknown brand or service, and that's particularly true with digital disruptors who lack a physical presence on the local high street.

A preoccupation with job title is an immediate giveaway that someone's priorities are not in line with the company's.

We're living in a world where international governance is failing to overcome borders, but technology is succeeding in removing them.

Climate change, migration... they transcend national borders and require an international response.

Without immigration, nations would stagnate. It is key for innovation and for economic growth.

I was pretty vocal about being anti-Brexit before the referendum vote.

'Big' problems are overwhelming, but when we distil them down to their simplest forms, then the solutions become simple, too.